ASHES and DIAMONDS
by Alexander Cockburn
The Osprey Eactor
..At_L ._._j_. .
."Almost since’the day-he first en
'tered the race for the Republican
presidential nomination in 1976, opin
ion has been sharply divided on the
' all important question of whether the
President is on semi-permanent men
tal vacation, or is actually rather more
on the ball than the press corps is
prepared to concede.
I’ve, always'-tended to incline
towards the latter theory, on the
grounds that Jerzy Kozinski notwith
standing you don't become president
by accident. Thus far the Iran/Con
tra inquiry buttresses the on-the-ball
school, showing that Reagan took a
keen hour-by-hour interest in what
North was up to.
Fans of the dotty-President theory
got a big lift the other day at reports
that Reagan had been seen playing
with a model airplane. But even here
all may not be what it seems. I quote
from the “Defense Update” section
of the July issue of a defense industry
publication called Rotor & Wing
International: “Will President Reagan
officiate at ceremonies next year
marking the first flight of the
Bell-Boeing V-22 Osprey [heli
copter]? Many believe he should, to
market [sic!] the historic nature of the
event, still on target for June 1988.
Rumors that he will go to Forth Worth
for the maiden flight are growing
since he was recently seen fiddling
with a model of the new aircraft [un
derlining in original], given to him by
U.S. Marine Corps Commandant
Gen. P.X. Kelley. Kelley and the
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Commander-in-chief spent some time
in a recent White House meeting go
ing over the V-22's virtues. When
Reagan returned to his office, he
took the model with him [underlin
ing in original] rather than give it to
an aide. Bell-Boeing officials hope
that this small sign of interest can be
parlayed into substantial support for
the Osprey program.”
Media Bias
When right-wingers like Reed Ir
vine press forward with astounding
claims that the mainstream media are
populated by ultra-liberals and even
crypto-Bolsheviks, chances are they
will cite studies by Robert and Linda
Lichter. A few years ago the Lichters,
wallowing in the usual mush of social
scientific “objectivity,” conducted
surveys proposing the view that most
of the reporting elite are only a cou
ple of steps to the right of Trotsky.
The truth, as anyone capable of turn
ing on a TV set or opening a news
paper knows well, is that reporters
maintain about the same revolutionary
profile as Senator Bill Bradley.
The Lichters are now the co
directors of the Washington-based
Center for Media and Public Affairs,
which describes itself as a “non
profit, non-partisan research institute,
which itself takes no position on
policy issues.”
From this Institute has come a fairly
predictable stream of Lichter-style
research. One recent handout was
headed “Scientists Say Chernobyl
Won't Happen Here,” with a clutch of
pro-nuclear power findings filling up
the page, as in, “A majority [from a
poll of 580 scientists selected ran
domly from American Men and
Vibmen of Science] of 56 percent
believe nuclear plants will be ‘very im
portant’ in meeting America’s future
energy needs. ... 71 percent rate a
Chernobyl-type accident as improb
able here.... 66 percent regard U.S.
nuclear plants as currently safe.
Robert Lichter concludes that the
center’s poll shows that Chernobyl
had no apparent effect on the scien
tific community’s belief in the safety
of American nuclear plants.”
You can gauge something of the In
stitute’s likely predilections by the sort
of friends it has. Back in 1984 the
Lichters were canvassing support for
the center. Among the mail they gen
erated—which I'm glad to disclose
here—was a testimonial from Edwin
Meese, at that time counselor to the
president. Meese wrote that a center
set up by the Lichters would be “a
valuable addition ... to a better
understanding of the role that the
media plays in the shaping of the na
tional agenda and public opinion.”
The general view that
the Reagan Adminis
tration is capable of
any villainy has been
fortified by the news
from Panama.
Faith Whittlesey, still at the White
House in the spring of 1984 before she
went as an activist Reaganite ambas
sador to Switzerland, wrote that the
Lichters “have confirmed what many
of us always suspected about the
worldview of journalists but it is good
to have the objective data.”
Pat Robertson, president of the
Christian Broadcasting Network,
wrote that “your center deserves to
be funded by every citizen in this
country who is concerned about the
influence of both print media and tele
vision.” Even more ecstatic was Pat
Buchanan, just about to become
director of communications for Rea
gan, who said that the Lichters had
made “an invaluable contribution to
America’s understanding of inherent
media bias and prejudice.”
But best of all, from the Lichters’
point of view, was a letter sent on
April 23, 1985 from President Rea
gan himself, who said with his usual
incisiveness that the Lichters’ work
was “scholarly not partisan” and that
“perfect objectivity may be beyond
the reach of human nature, but fair
should be demanded of
ness
everyone.”
Perhaps therefore it is not entirely
surprising that two years later the
center’s Media Monitor should be say
ing sourly of news coverage of the
Tower Commission’s Report that
“Questions of leadership and legali
ty dominated the news agenda at the
expense of policy debates;” that net
works were using unnamed sources,
and that “one story in six finished
with a zinger—a closer with negative
spin.... Negative closers were eight
times as numerous as positive ones.”
This is how the downward spiral of
media conservatism is fortified. The
Lichters, powerfully backed by
Reagan and the others, turn out
reports that tend to validate right wing
conspiracy theory. These reports get
rushed in front of media executives,
particularly in television, who then
tremble at charges of fostering the
leftist conspiracy and redouble their
vigilance against liberal contagion.
But let us leave the Lichters on a
note of uplift. One of their more an
guished reports recently bewailed the
fact that TV entertainment portrays
business as corrupt and businessmen
as villains, and that whereas before
1965 two-thirds of the corporate ex
ecutives shown on TV were good
guys, that figure was cut in half dur
ing the following decade. (This, don’t
forget, was the decade that saw the
rise of Nader’s consumer movement
and that ended with titans of the For
tune 500 sadly confessing their nefar
ious practices in contributing to Nix
on’s slush funds.)
Today, say the Lichters, business
men on prime time programs are por
trayed twice as negatively as char
acters in other occupations, commit
crimes three times as often, do 40
percent of the murders committed by
characters with census-listed occupa
tions and are motivated by greed five
times as often as other characters.
Among shows portraying government
business relations, over 80 percent
portray business as too powerful.
This is one of the most uplifting ac
counts of prime-time TV I have seen
in years.
Fashion Notes
A couple of weeks spent in England
recently showed me that even cities
as hidebound as London can change
rapidly. Six years ago the Soho district
was even sleazier than I remember it
from a generation ago, with low-rent
sex shops vying for space with burger
joints and other emblems of a world
on the wane.
The Thatcherite boom in the south
has changed all that. Vibrant yuppies
leap in and out of brasserie-style res
taurants (poached turbot with broad
beans; lamp chops with tri-color pep
percorns, etc., etc.) and the whores’
stoops are being driven out by adver
tising agencies.
The big thing among disaffected
youth is to wear t-shirts emblazoned
with gigantic hammer and sickles,
cyrillic letters and other iconic refer
ents to the workers’ state. I asked one
fellow with the letterhead of the Soviet
CP and Gorbachev’s head all over his
chest whether he was a communist.
“Hah,” he replied, “I can’t read their
books. Too effing boring. But this
stuff really pisses off those Thatch
erites.”
The Panama Story
The general view in Britain that the
Reagan Administration is capable of
any villainy has been fortified by the
news from Panama. As detailed here,
the recently retired Panamanian Chief
of Staff Colonel Roberto Diaz Her
rera has charged that the de facto
Head of Panama, Defense Force Head
General Manuel Noriega, conspired
with the U.S. to assassinate Noriega’s
popular predecessor Omar Torrijos
and rigged the 1984 elections. The
Colonel also said that Noriega had
Continued on page 16
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